"Intel hung on to that scheme long past its useful life. The only reason they got away with it was their huge scale as a company."
I agree with the former, disagree with the latter. HyperTransport gave AMD a significant leg up on interprocessor communication but Intel's front bus and cycles/instruction in the most important parts of the architecture were still superior to AMDs. When HyperTransport was introduced the only thing that saved Intel from losing even more market share (in my largely uninformed opinion) was AMD's inability to market their own innovations as well as Intel and the fact that most of the other silicon on Intel's processors was implemented better (for real world use cases, not benchmarks).
Intel and AMD both make great tech and yes Intel is much better at at ruthless business side, but the comparisons that you see in the media about their technology don't even begin to scratch the surface of reality. These systems are really complicated and they differ enough that just about every marketing term describing CPUs is useless when comparing architectures. For example, there was a time when I had a 900 mhz Athlon and a newer Intel CPU (I believe it was a Celeron or Pentium) running at 1.8ghz. There were use cases where the Intel could barely beat the Athlon by 20% and other times it would have a 10x improvement because its processor cache was 3x faster.
>AMD's inability to market their own innovations as well
Look, we can quibble about the details all day long, but AMD never had a chance, even if you concede AMD's momentary advantage over Intel in having both HT and better CPU's for a short time. Intel is a behemoth with all of the market share, and OEM computer manufacturing can't flip overnight. Intel allowed AMD to live so they could tell the FTC, EU trade commission that the CPU business was a competitive market. That tactic served them well.
> as Intel and the fact that most of the other silicon on Intel's processors was implemented better
Come on. You make it sound as though Intel is infallible at hardware design. Besides failing to drive innovation much of the time, they have had some huge failures, Itanic? anything Intel ever produced to do with video? the 8051? (the 8051 is a financially successful product, but IMO a terrible microcontroller). They're great at clinging on to their legacy designs, and adopting others' good ideas after they're proven.
>(for real world use cases, not benchmarks).
We both know that benchmarks are just a well organized way to tell a lie, same as specifications.
I don't make them sound infallible, you make them sound incompetent. The point is that because of Intel's experience, sheer size, and resources, they have a massive leg up over the very fragmented ARM group. They fuck up all the time, but they almost always catch up on features or optimizations (except for the power efficiency aspect, which I believe is highly dependent on the architecture) and they do so very quickly. When they do innovate (which is very often), others can't catch up because by the time they do, Intel is already ahead again (not entirely true, but close enough).
"They're great at clinging on to their legacy designs, and adopting others' good ideas after they're proven."
I guess everyone just really loves the underdog but come on, read a book. AMD's history revolves around copying almost every aspect of Intel's business and then they get hailed for coming up with TWO original things in TWO decades (AMD64 and HyperTransport). I'm sorry to oversimplify this, but this is the only response I could think of against a silly statement like that.
I agree with the former, disagree with the latter. HyperTransport gave AMD a significant leg up on interprocessor communication but Intel's front bus and cycles/instruction in the most important parts of the architecture were still superior to AMDs. When HyperTransport was introduced the only thing that saved Intel from losing even more market share (in my largely uninformed opinion) was AMD's inability to market their own innovations as well as Intel and the fact that most of the other silicon on Intel's processors was implemented better (for real world use cases, not benchmarks).
Intel and AMD both make great tech and yes Intel is much better at at ruthless business side, but the comparisons that you see in the media about their technology don't even begin to scratch the surface of reality. These systems are really complicated and they differ enough that just about every marketing term describing CPUs is useless when comparing architectures. For example, there was a time when I had a 900 mhz Athlon and a newer Intel CPU (I believe it was a Celeron or Pentium) running at 1.8ghz. There were use cases where the Intel could barely beat the Athlon by 20% and other times it would have a 10x improvement because its processor cache was 3x faster.